Mother's Pride and Radio 390.

It is amazing how Erith changes with the weather; when overcast and rainy, the town seems to metaphorically sink into the gloom, but conversely when the sun shines, the place perks up considerably. I noticed this last weekend when I went out with my camera to get some photos of the town centre and the Bexley College new campus on Walnut Tree Road. As you can see in the shot above, the building is steadily taking shape, ready for opening in September, at the start of the 2014 / 2015 academic year. I have been invited for a guided tour around the new college, and will be reporting back, complete with photographs once I have had a good old nose around next Thursday. I cannot help but feel concerned that the old Erith Library, which as you can see above is located directly opposite the new college campus, is still left unused and locked up. It is an excellent building, and to my mind in every way far superior to the soulless and anodyne new library, which is located opposite Erith Health Centre in Erith High Street. The old library building was gifted to the town by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. I really wish it could be put to some use, as I think otherwise the building could end up being demolished to make way for yet more flats. Erith is under a lot of development pressure at present; the overheated property market all over Greater London has meant that developers have been snapping up  affordable land all over the place. Erith has a reputation as a town that has (relatively) affordable housing that is in easy reach of central London. One can get from Erith to London Bridge or Cannon Street in around forty minutes by overland train, and the forthcoming Crossrail link to Abbey Wood will mean easier access to places in West London and Heathrow, again making the local area more desirable for the commuter looking for a convenient place to live. The downside of this is that currently it feels like every scrap of land is either built on, or about to be built on. The apartment block that is sandwiched between the KFC Drive Through and Morrison’s petrol station on the old Erith Trades and Social Club site is taking rapid shape; the Erith Park development, currently the largest housing development in Europe is proceeding apace, and the huge area of brown field land on what was the old gravel pit located between Bexley Road and Fraser Road has been earmarked as the potential location for a thousand residential properties. This is over and above innumerable smaller scale developments that are springing up all around the town. Erith is undergoing building growth unlike anything I can recall, and in many ways it will bring opportunities to the area; my concern is that I have seen little activity in respect of improving water supply, drainage and other essential amenities, and how schools and social services will cope with the influx of new people, especially in this current harsh economic climate – things may be getting better in the City, but in the less trendy suburbs, there has been little evidence of new employment and financial recovery.  What Erith needs is a new employer on the scale of Morrison’s or ADM Oils – two huge organisations with resources that really make a difference to the local economy.  Tesco have opened a delivery depot in the area, but compared with some of their other sites, it is relatively small scale, and as warehouses are largely automated nowadays, they do not provide the number of jobs one would have seen historically.

One local company based in the Manford Industrial Estate on Manor Road may not be the largest employer, or the most prosperous, but they do have a couple of important things going in their favour; they have a very specialised field, and they have a great sense of humour. Cat Flaps South East are a dedicated supplier of cat flaps ranging from the most simple mechanical flaps to the most sophisticated micro chip reading cat flaps which will only admit your own cat and not half the moggies from the neighbourhood. You can see a short promotional video about them below. I wish them every success.

I am not a great party goer; unless the person holding the party is well known to me, I must admit that I tend to decline invitations. The reasons are various, but one of the main ones is that when I invariably get talking to someone, and they ask what I do for a living and they find out I work in IT, the reaction is like that of a moth to a flame. The party goer will almost without exception then regale me with tales of computer problems and a tedious list of issues that they cannot resolve. Almost as night follows day they will then ask me to “take a look” at their PC. What this infers is that they then expect me to fix their computer woes for free. The fact is, I have not got my hands dirty fixing hardware issues or resolving software bugs on personal computers for years; my day job involves massive corporate databases and applications which may span over multiple servers and thousands of desktops around Europe, the Middle East and India. I employ resources from various technical specialisations to actually carry out the remedial work “on the coal face”.  All this is lost on the person wanting my individual help. When I tell them I am not really the person they need, they tend to counter this with “I can pay you your going rate”.  What they don’t realise is that my corporate charge rate is nearly £500 per hour (please note this bears absolutely no relation to my actual wages – it is what my employer charges clients, and how they make shed loads of money – believe me, the consultancy business is extremely lucrative for the large corporate professional service providers). On top of this, my knowledge of Windows is minimal at best – I think it more than likely that they know more about Windows than I do (I run a Mac and various Linux boxes myself, and only use Windows when I am being paid to – my background is in Linux and Unix). You can get a good idea of what I am talking about by clicking here. I have even gone to the extent of, when asked at a party, saying that I am an undertaker – it certainly kills the conversation stone dead, if nothing else. You would not get a party goes expecting a landscape gardener or plumber to do work for free, so why expect someone with an IT background to do so? Do please feel free to comment below, or Email me directly to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The News Shopper did not really do justice to local (Dartford) chap Nicky Boardman, and his excellent blog “tooupbeatforcancer.com” which covers his struggle with a rare form of terminal abdominal cancer. I feel that he should publish the blog as a book; it is excellently written – both upsetting and blackly humorous in turn. You will find yourself both disturbed by his plight, whilst also laughing at his turn of phrase, for example Chapter One of the blog is fetchingly entitled “The Day My Bum Fell Out”. Nicky Boardman writes unflinchingly about his situation and the experiences he has gone through; the blog can be harrowing, but his prose is beautifully crafted, and often very funny indeed. Unfortunately I doubt that there is going to be a happy ending to Nicky’s story, but his online writing may help bring greater attention to this horrible, invisible killer. Highly recommended.

I received some very pleasing news from one of my anonymous sources on Wednesday. As long time readers will be aware, I am keen to preserve and promote community pubs, and to ensure that they are run to the benefit of locals. There is one notable exception to this – an establishment called the Phoenix, which was located in Lower Hythe Street, Dartford (photo above copyright David Anstiss). I am delighted to be able to announce that the place has recently been bulldozed flat. Back in November 2009 I wrote a scathing report on the place, which got me a lot of enemies for a while – you can read the piece here. A small (ancient and rather smelly) unrepresentative sector of Dartford’s biker community took umbrage to what I said, all of which was true; the pub allowed smoking inside, served very underage drinkers, and had posters on the walls promoting extreme racist hate organisations. On top of that, there was an elderly motorbike in a side room which was in the final stages of disintegration, and reeked of raw petrol. With all of the smoking going on, I was surprised that the whole festering morass did not go up like a Molotov Cocktail. Patrons were seen urinating up the pubs’ exterior walls, and the place was covered by a barely suppressed aura of menace. Some readers thought that I was exaggerating for effect, but actually nothing could have been further from the truth. After my piece and a few challenging comments, it all then went quiet for a while, then in January 2011, the following story broke, initially in the local papers, but soon after in the national tabloids. The Dartford Messenger reported: “Police found guns, ammunition, and knives when they raided The Phoenix, in Lower Hythe Street. Officers executing a firearms warrant at the pub found a loaded handgun in a cabinet, a cloth-covered .22 rifle in a cupboard, a dart gun, a Taser-style stun gun, and a large amount of ammunition, including rifle rounds. They also discovered shotgun cartridges, a clear sealed bag containing three white bullets, and a small bag of Class B drug amphetamine". According to the report from North Kent Police's licensing department, search teams found knives and "an assortment of other weapons throughout the bedroom and the rest of the living quarters at the pub”. To which I then commented “The place has been a threat to civilised society for some time, it being the base of a group of racist thugs and drug dealers - the place would not look out of place in a Guy Ritchie gangster movie. The thugs call themselves bikers, but the bikers I have known for years would be offended to be associated with this lot. The Phoenix should be bulldozed and the hole concreted over. As Ellen Ripley once said "Take off and nuke them from space - it's the only way to be sure". Well, my wish has now been granted. The Phoenix is now no more. It will not be missed by many.

One of the most important and heavily used main roads in Erith is being closed for extensive improvement and remodelling. Manor Road will be closed for a period of ten weeks from the 16th June to allow it to be completely rebuilt. The road has had attention in the recent past. It was resurfaced in 2009, and again in 2011, but in both cases the new surface started disintegrating within months of being laid; not something you would wish for when one considers the cost of the special road noise reducing tarmac formula is somewhat over £1 million per mile to the council tax payer, this is not good news. This time a far more dramatic set of repairs are planned. The road is being constructed pretty much from scratch, something that really should have been done before. The crumbling road foundations are being dug out to a depth of several feet and replaced with new material being installed. The work will be carried out in phases, so that access to homes and businesses will be kept, albeit with some fairly dramatic diversions – if you look at the graphic above, it will give you a good idea of the drastic route changes both buses and private vehicles will be subject to for the duration of the rebuilding project. Personally I feel that it will be a lot of short term pain for a lot of long term gain. Finally the council and their contractors are doing what they really should have done back in 2009. Hopefully by the end of the summer Erith will have a road to be proud of. I will be documenting the work over the forthcoming weeks, and will post any interesting developments – watch this space.

Every so often I like to highlight something that locals may not be aware of; Thamesmead has had a food bank for quite some time, and recently one has also been set up in Erith. I asked Reverend Julie Conalty of Christ Church Erith to be a guest writer this week to explain exactly how the food bank works, and what they do. I have also found out that they are planning a credit union as a secure and far more affordable source of credit compared with the pay day loan companies that proliferate and charge thousands of percent in interest. More on this in future editions. 

Bexley Foodbank – Erith Distribution Centre

Like the esteemed author of this blog, prior to moving to Erith I too supported the Greenwich Foodbank in Thamesmead. When I became vicar at Christ Church Erith, it seemed evident to me that Erith was also in need of a Foodbank Distribution Centre. From the leafy vicarage it is hard to tell, but our parish is the 4th most deprived in the Rochester Diocese. Recent changes in benefits regulations have undoubtedly made things even tougher. Fortunately my fellow ministers at St John’s Erith and Queen Street Baptist Church agreed that in addition to praying for our local community, our churches should follow Christ’s command that we quite literally feed the hungry. Avery Hill Christian Fellowship had already set up a Trussell Trust Foodbank for Bexley Borough but at that point were only distributing from Sidcup, so we teamed up with them to set up the Erith Distribution Centre based at Queen Street. Every Wednesday and Saturday morning from 10am until 1pm at Queen Street Baptist Church Hall our volunteers distribute food to local people who have been sent by the JobCentre, Citizens Advice Bureau or other recognized referral agency (a ticket is needed from a referrer who knows more about the circumstances of the individual claimant). The food bank cannot provide a long term solution to poverty – it is designed to plug gaps and address crises - but at the moment we can’t keep up with demand. In Erith we are distributing food faster than it comes in. Morrisons in Erith have come on board to support us (you may have seen the trolley for donations down there) and many churches in the borough now collect food for Bexley Foodbank, but we still don’t have enough. If you want to find out more then go to www.bexleyfoodbank.org.uk. You can deliver food donations direct to the Erith Distribution Centre during opening hours or drop food off in the box in porch at Christ Church from 8.30am to 11.30am any Sunday morning. Finally I need to say that there really is something very wrong with a society that seems to be removing the safety nets that protect vulnerable individuals and families from poverty and deprivation. As I write this there are media reports about how the UK targets to reduce child poverty will be missed – even the most optimistic projections for wage and employment growth suggest that absolute poverty is still forecast to be a full 16% above target by 2020. Volunteers and donors are stepping in, but we must not lose sight of scandal of people going hungry in the UK. So don’t just give food (or time or money) to the Foodbank, raise your voice in protest.

The Revd Julie Conalty, Vicar of Christ Church

I have found out a strong link between a local company and a short lived, but incredibly popular 1960’s offshore radio station (which were erroneously labelled “pirates” by the popular press, but were in fact no such thing, as they operated outside of British territorial waters, and at least until the 1967 Marine Offences Act, were outside of the law). As I have previously written, Erith based Grooms “The Hygienic Baker”, who began in a shop in West Street in Victorian times, became extremely successful, and later moved into dedicated premises in Belmont Road, Northumberland Heath. This massive bakery also featured stables for the horses that pulled their vans, along with a tack room and even a forge for their dedicated Farrier. The bakery is still there nowadays, though it is now owned by British Bakeries, and the stables are long gone. What I have uncovered this week is that in the mid 1960’s, Rank Hovis McDougall (the company who took over and absorbed Grooms prior to the advent of British Bakeries) were a major sponsor and commercial partner with offshore radio station Radio 390. Radio 390 was located on the abandoned Red Sands sea fort, off the coast of Whitstable. The station was the third enterprise to broadcast from the fort – previously it had been used by Radio Invicta from June 1964 until February 1965, followed by KING Radio from March to September 1965. Both these earlier stations were amateurish affairs, and used a relatively low powered one kilowatt AM transmitter feeding into a rather inefficient antenna system. This meant that their signal was not heard over a wide area, and they struggled to gain a decent audience, and consequently they were largely ignored by advertisers. All this changed with the advent of Radio 390, which was a far more slick and professional, and had both a rather more powerful ten Kilowatt medium wave transmitter (which they told people was actually thirty five Kilowatts, but it wasn't), and a huge and very efficient 297 foot tall vertical antenna mean that the signal of Radio 390 was audible all over London and the South East – the most lucrative market in the UK as far as advertising revenue was concerned. The format of the station was also a complete contrast to that played by the ship based offshore giants – Radio London and Radio Caroline; they both played non – stop pop music. Instead, Radio 390 was firmly targeted at housewives. When regular broadcasts began on the 25th September 1965 at 4pm on a wavelength of 388 Metres (773KHz) the musical format was easy listening, smooth classical and big bands – the first track played was “Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Miller. While other offshore stations had shows lasting two or three hours, Radio 390's schedule contained a number of short programmes. This was more like a BBC schedule than an offshore one. And, although slightly more warm and informal, the presenters had an almost BBC-ish style too, even to the extent that at the end of each show one of the presenters would give a credit (“South Of The Border was introduced by....”) in the manner of a continuity announcer. As Radio 390 grew, other programmes were added to the mix. There was a daily drama serial, “Doctor Paul”, imported from Australia, and bravely scheduled opposite the BBC Light Programme's long-established Mrs. Dale's Diary; and there were shows devoted to musicals, blues, country and light classical music. After only three weeks on the air, the station was receiving some five hundred fan letters a day. By May 1966 National Opinion Polls estimated the station's audience as 2.6 million listeners, a majority of whom were women. This was an absolute goldmine for the advertisers, who flocked to the station in droves. Back in the sixties, it was less common for women, especially once they were married to go out to work; many stayed at home and looked after the children. They had almost complete control over domestic purchases such as brands of food and cleaning materials. The fact that Radio 390 very cleverly targeted this audience meant that advertisers were prepared to pay high rates to get their commercials broadcast; companies that took out ambitious and successful campaigns on Radio 390 included The News of the World, and the magazine Reveille, along with a host of smaller companies, but the biggest of the lot was for Mother’s Pride bread, which was produced by Rank Hovis McDougall in the Northumberland Heath bakery. There is some evidence to suggest that the advertising campaign and programme sponsorship on Radio 390 was so extensive that the baker became an investor and business partner in the radio station during the summer of 1966, though as the Government began to take action to stop the offshore stations, and prepared to introduce the Marine Offences Act, many investors decided to distance themselves from offshore broadcasting altogether. In September 1966, Radio 390 was taken to court for the first in a series of cases where they were accused of broadcasting from within British territorial limits. The cases were fought, and one by one they were lost by the station, they appealed, then lost the appeal; by the summer of 1967 the Marine Offences Act passed into law, and all offshore stations with the exception of Radio Caroline had ceased broadcasting. Radio 390 was also such a casualty. The station is largely forgotten now, but in 1966 it was one of the biggest radio hits in the UK, and had a real connection with the local area, thanks to the power of Mother’s Pride and the Northumberland Heath former Groom's bakery!

I came across this weeks' end video somewhat by accident. It has been made by a local person who wants to illustrate how much Erith has improved over the last few years; it is mostly a slide show featuring locally taken photographs. I noticed with some amusement that roughly half of the photographs are actually mine, and have been copied from my Flickr photo site here. I am rather flattered - though it would have been nice to have been asked before they used them! See what you think anyway, and feel free to leave a comment below. 

The ashes of the Phoenix.

The photo above shows some tugs moored on a buoy on the River Thames at Erith; the view is looking upstream towards Lower Belvedere and the industrial works located there. Click on the photo for a larger view.

Despite the assurances from the authorities that work was due to commence on the repairs to the fabric of Erith Railway station as I covered last week, I can confirm that absolutely nothing has happened in the intervening time; it is now over six weeks since the station entrance was surrounded by yellow and black striped warning tape and metal fencing. Basically the railways don't give as stuff, as the building itself does not generate any revenue. All this and fares went up 12.7% this month, for what is rapidly becoming a worse service. You can read more about the situation on Darryl's excellent 853 blog here.

Fellow radio amateur and Erith resident Bob G4MHJ has just upgraded his home weather station; his excellent new version is fully internet enabled. As well as the station having its' own web server, it also provides a local feed for Google Weather. A screen capture of the weather station main page is shown above. A direct link to the live version can be seen by clicking here, or by using the link on the right side of the Maggot Sandwich home page. Bob's own website can be seen by clicking here. Bob is providing a valuable contribution to local meteorology.

Several local libraries are being threatened with closure, as the Council tries to save £975,000. You can read all about it on the News Shopper website here. Upper Belvedere and Slade Green libraries are two of the five local amenities that look like they are for the chop. I used to be a great fan and regular user of both Erith (one of the only locations not currently threatened) and Upper Belvedere libraries, but since they were rebranded as "Library Plus" I have avoided them like the plague.  They have gone all self service and there are few staff, and those that are present appear disinterested and unmotivated. The library now seems to be the place for students to get free WiFi access for their laptops, so that they can update Facebook and copy and paste text into their essays from Wikipedia. Libraries don't actually appear to have much to do with books, which I find is a great pity. The old Erith Library was housed in the magnificent Andrew Carnegie gifted building in Walnut Tree Road. The building is now semi empty, now that the Library "plus" is running in the soulless and dispiriting new building opposite Erith Health Centre. I think I am far from being alone in considering this to have been a very poor move. The only possible upside to this would be if the old library building gets utilised for educational purposes if Bexley College moves into a new campus, possibly to be constructed on the old Erith tram shed site adjacent to the station, and directly opposite the old library. It would seem to make sense to put the magnificent building back into productive use. Let us hope that some common sense breaks out, though I am not holding my breath.

Early in November 2009, I wrote the following passage on the Maggot Sandwich: I had a bit of a journey into the recent past yesterday evening; Ian's new band played their first gig with him as frontman / vocalist at the Phoenix pub in Dartford. (Photo above) I ended up with my clothes, hair and skin reeking of tobacco smoke - something that I thought was now a relic of the past. The pub, which is a hotbed of neo Nazi followers if the conversations I overheard were anything to go by, is also the home to a fairly large number of apparently infirm and ancient bikers. The landlady positively encourages smokers within the premises - despite this being completely illegal under current anti smoking laws. The venue was a haze of cigarette smoke and the memory of the disgusting, unhealthy and criminal stench clings to me still. The band played well, under very uncomfortable circumstances, and were enthusiastically received by the crowd composed of a variety of geriatric neanderthals, along with a smattering of relatively normal people, who I guess had turned up specifically to see the band. The band had to set up their equipment in front of the entrance to both the male and female toilets; during their set, a number of women had to make their way onto the "stage" in order to gain access to the loo. Strangely the same was not the case with the straggly haired, portly and  extensively tattooed male population of the cesspit of a hostelry; I later discovered they were venturing outside in order to urinate up one of the pubs' external walls. Enchanting. The Phoenix should be nuked from space; it is most definitely the dirtiest, scruffiest, smelliest establishment that houses a well past their sell by date biker gang, who would mainly be advised to hang up their sweaty and grime encrusted leathers and take to a bath chair. One of the side rooms in the noxious hostelry housed a rusty Kawasaki motorbike in its' final death throes; it appeared to be being broken for spares. Inside a pub. Yup. My views of the Phoenix and its' inhabitants have not softened in the intervening time; in actuality they have been upheld after the news that earlier this week the dive was raided by North Kent Police. The following story appears in this weeks' Dartford Messenger:


Police found guns, ammunition, and knives when they raided The Phoenix, in Lower Hythe Street.

Officers executing a firearms warrant at the pub found a loaded handgun in a cabinet, a cloth-covered .22 rifle in a cupboard, a dart gun, a Taser-style stun gun, and a large amount of ammunition, including rifle rounds.

They also discovered shotgun cartridges, a clear sealed bag containing three white bullets, and a small bag of Class B drug amphetamine.

According to the report from North Kent Police's licensing department, search teams found knives and "an assortment of other weapons" throughout the bedroom and the rest of the living quarters at the pub.

At the time I wrote my original piece about the pub, several people thought I had gone "over the top" with what I wrote - you can read the entire original posting, along with the comments here. It turns out I was completely correct, so excuse me whilst I have a little gloat. The place has been a threat to civilised society for some time, it being the base of a group of racist thugs and drug dealers - the place would not look out of place in a Guy Ritchie gangster movie. The thugs call themselves bikers, but the bikers I have known for years would be offended to be associated with this lot. The Phoenix should be bulldozed and the hole concreted over. As Ellen Ripley once said "Take off and nuke them from space - it's the only way to be sure". You can read the original story about the raid on the Dartford Messenger website by clicking here. The story also made the national press, as you can see by clicking here.

"For Sale" signs have now been erected on Erith Trades & Social club in James Watt Way. I doubt the building will be reused; it would require such an extensive renovation that I can only see the building being bulldozed and replaced with yet more flats. You can see more photos of the local area if you click here for my Flickr photo website.


The BBC News website and others have been commemorating the 30th anniversary of the New Cross fire, when 13 young people were killed in a fire which started during a party they were holding in a house at 439 New Cross Road on the 18th January 1981.  Much has been written about the fire and how it started. The commemoration made me think back to a conversation I had less than a week after the incident occurred. I was sitting in my English class, and the teacher was late arriving. I was sitting next to a chap called Adrian, whose cousin had been one of the victims of the fire. We talked at length, and he told me a story I have never been able to forget. I cannot verify the accuracy of his account, but I have since spoken to a couple of other people who lived in New Cross at the time, and it would appear to be consistent with their own experiences.  Adrian told me that the party had been high spirited but not too rowdy; at some point an older man in his mid twenties turned up and successfully managed to gate crash the party. Eventually the man's boorish and drunken behaviour got him chucked out of the house - apparently there was an argument on the doorstep and he eventually went on his way. Adrian alleged that the man later returned with a jerry can of petrol and set fire to the house, killing 13 party goers in the process. Popular rumour at the time was that members of the National Front had been behind the killings, and that they were racially motivated. Many in the Afro - Caribbean community had long felt ignored or even targetted by the police, who were able to hide behind the sus law to disproportionately target young black males. It suited local feelings at the time to be able to pin the blame on an external group of high profile racists, and gave the community a bugbear against which to unite. It has since been posited that the event was a cornerstone to the creation of an identity for young black Britons. You can read an essay on the subject by clicking here.


The story continues; what I was also told was that the arsonist was actually caught and interrogated by the Metropolitan Police within a few days of the fire. He was then released and disappeared. Adrian said the reason for this was the man was a member of the Yardies, and also a high level police informer. The police were so frightened of losing control of the Yardie gangs in London, that they were prepared to overlook the murder of thirteen teenagers in order to protect their secret intelligence source at the time. I related this story to a friend who lived in New Cross at the time of the fire; he said "You know what? I heard exactly the same thing". Again, I have no way of knowing the truth of the account, but it certainly seems to be consistent with the situation at that point in history.


The video clip this week dates back from the period of the New Cross fire. In many ways it highlights the real and dangerous tension between the police and various minority communities in the UK. At the time, this sketch from Not the Nine O'Clock News was pretty inflammatory stuff - as it was essentially true - the police were rife with racism and bigotry, and the hated Special Patrol Group were a distillation of this. Here is PC Savage (Griff Rhys Jones) being given a dressing down regarding his "over zealous" behaviour by the Chief Superintendant, played by a young Rowan Atkinson.

Poppies and the Phoenix.

I had a bit of a journey into the recent past yesterday evening; Ian's new band,  (pictured above) played their first gig with him as frontman / vocalist at the Phoenix pub in Dartford. I ended up with my clothes, hair and skin reeking of tobacco smoke - something that I thought was now a relic of the past. The pub, which is a hotbed of neo Nazi followers if the conversations I overheard were anything to go by, is also the home to a fairly large number of apparently infirm and ancient bikers. The landlady positively encourages smokers within the premises - despite this being completely illegal under current anti smoking laws. The venue was a haze of cigarette smoke and the memory of the disgusting, unhealthy and criminal stench clings to me still. The band played well, under very uncomfortable circumstances, and were enthusiastically received by the crowd composed of a variety of geriatric neanderthals, along with a smattering of relatively normal people, who I guess had turned up specifically to see the band. The band had to set up their equipment in front of the entrance to both the male and female toilets; during their set, a number of women had to make their way onto the "stage" in order to gain access to the loo. Strangely the same was not the case with the straggly haired, portly and  extensively tattooed male population of the cesspit of a hostelry; I later discovered they were venturing outside in order to urinate up one of the pubs' external walls. Enchanting. The Phoenix should be nuked from space; it is most definitely the dirtiest, scruffiest, smelliest establishment that houses a well past their sell by date biker gang, who would mainly be advised to hang up their sweaty and grime encrusted leathers and take to a bath chair. One of the side rooms in the noxious hostelry housed a rusty Kawasaki motorbike in its' final death throes; it appeared to be being broken for spares. Inside a pub. Yup.

Erith has been sounding like the outskirts of Basra for the last few nights, as the fireworks have been let loose for yet another year. Teeming rain, wind and other meteorological nasties do not seem to deter the revellers. It seems strange that all these years on from the events of the gunpowder plot, we still commemorate what could conceivably have become Britain's' first case  of suicide bombing.

It sometimes seems that every person over the age of 55 is almost automatically issued with a mobility scooter if they live locally. These mini vehicles are a boon to those who would otherwise be confined  to a wheelchair, or otherwise stuck indoors with limited contact with the outside world. I have to counter this with the observation that a small but significant minority use these vehicles as devices of terror; I have been forced to jump from the pavement out of the way and into the oncoming traffic twice in the last week due to the inconsiderate actions of demon scooterists. I know of one chap only in his mid 30's who rides a mobility scooter around Erith town centre who is actually fully able bodied, but just does not like to walk – I have seen him running around the Riverside Gardens, playing football with his two young sons on several occasions. Most locals think he is genuinely disabled, not realising he is really just a bone idle waster.  Mobility scooters seem to vary in size and capability from something little more than a deluxe motorised bar stool with a pair of handle bars, to a vehicle almost worthy of the title of an electric car. I think the way they interact with pedestrians and the regulations that pertain to their use could do with a bit of a makeover.

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the release of The Wall by Pink Floyd. I recall clearly as a child when my dad brought the double album home, and we sat in near darkness to listen to it.  I also recall listening to Tommy Vance on the Radio 1 Friday Rock Show, when he first played “Comfortably Numb” - he let the music fade to silence, and said “There are insufficient superlatives in the English language to describe that track”.

On a different note, I should be taking delivery of my two pieces of abstract art from up and coming London based artist, David Zimmer.  I will be posting photos of my two acquisitions on line shortly.

The humble Maggot Sandwich is now being read by several local councillors and an aspiring MP; read through some of the recent comments and you will see their input.

This years' Poppy appeal seems to have inspired the public to be especially generous – the current situation in Afghanistan notwithstanding.  Personally I would pay a premium for a small metal poppy badge, in preference to the usual plastic and paper poppy; not many blokes wear jackets with button holes nowadays, and fixing the current poppy design does not lend itself to mobility between clothing forms. I got my poppy at the earliest opportunity, with a substantial donation. I fixed it to my brown tweed jacket and have worn it with pride; As the week has gone on, and the weather has become more wintry, I have swapped to  heavier coat – with no lapels. I have been walking past poppy sellers, inexplicably feeling guilty, as it looks like I have not contributed towards the charity appeal, even though I have. Normally I am not a person who gives much consideration to what others think, but for some reason I get a guilty feeling whenever I walk past a poppy seller when I have not been wearing one.

One of the down sides of being a daily user of public transport is the unwanted exposure to the belly button fluff caught in the filter of the UK's gene pool. I was on the aforementioned 99 bus earlier this week when a scruffy looking Chav got on and sat adjacent to me. To use the vernacular, he was "ripped to the tits", probably on Ecstasy. His eyes were like saucers, and he was eager to engage anyone in aimless conversation. I was fortunate to be able to move away to another part of the lower deck. To add to this, I was on the 99 again on Saturday as it drew slowly into Bexleyheath; a dishevelled and creepy looking bloke hammered on the driver's protective shield and demanded to be let off the bus whilst it waited at at the traffic lights; the reason stated was that he only had a few minutes left to sign on at Bexleyheath Police station in order to comply with the terms of his bail. Maybe he should have left home earlier then, or better still, not committed the crime in the first place.

Open warfare with the local scum is something I avoid unless inevitable – and there is not much room to swing a steel toecapped boot on a bus.

After the tribulations I experienced upgrading my Asus EeePC 901 netbook to Ubuntu 9.10 Linux, I ended up doing a clean install, which was far less eventful and much more productive. This entry is being written on the tiny machine, whilst sitting in the Robin Hood and Little John.  The webcam now works again – not that it is something I use very often. An impromptu photo of me at work on this update is below for your edification. Ahem.

You can catch an excellent performance by virtuoso multi instrumentalist Booker T Jones in a concert he played at this years' Cambridge Festival that was shown earlier in the week on BBC4. It is currently available on the BBC iPlayer here.

One TV show I miss, but can sometimes catch on reruns on channels like Bravo is the original “Make Better” show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”. The show originally ran from 2003 – 2007 and I watched it avidly. The makeover idea of five gay guys making over a style needy straight guy did have limited scope, but it was definitely fun whilst it lasted. A fact that not many know is that I applied to be a straight guy candidate for the UK version of the show, but did not get selected.

As I have previously mentioned, I am not an avid early adopter of new technology. For me, it needs to justify itself before I will take the plunge. A typical example of this is Sky and their High Definition TV offering. I am still using a CRT television with a bog standard Sky+ box; I will only upgrade when my current setup turns up its' toes. Personally I am singularly unimpressed with hi def – I don't actually think it is particularly good.The whole hi def standard is shortly to undergo an upgrade to even higher resolution, and consequent greater bandwidth, so a further purchase of new equipment will then be required.

Fellow local photographer Justin Bailey has an exhibition currently showing in the new Erith Library – do get along there to view his work, I think you will find it a worthwhile trip. Go through the main entrance and turn a sharp right, and you will see his work on display.

The video clip this week is an except from Billy Connolly's stage show, where he talks about the preparations he had to make before a medical coloscopy. Not for the squeamish, but very funny.